Strategy and Tactics
Unlike the original Mount & Blade: Warband, Gekokujo introduce a whole new different gameplay experience. There are two noticeable differences: 1 - No shields involved Shields are not used in Sengoku Jidai for some reasons, Samurai prefer to use two-handed weapons such as Yari, Naginata, Yumi bow and so on, to fight on the battlefield. Without any shields, a new strategy is needed to avoid heavy losses from enemy missile fire. 2 - Introduction to gunpowder weapons As the title of the game suggest, a lowly peasant can even defeat a lord who is superior to him in every way. The introduction of gunpowder weapons such as teppo guns completely changes the way the battle is fought. Peasants with teppo guns can now fight evenly against hardened veteran troops. However, it is not the teppo guns itself that win the entire battle but the strategy and tactics used. Troop overview Troops are divided into 3 sub categories: 1 Melee 2 Missile 3 Cavalry '['1] Melee troops: Melee units should be your backbone of your entire army. They can play defensively role against cavalry and counter-attack when the time is right. The melee troops are flexible but they are still vulnerable against missile troops. Spears : Defensive troops, effective against cavalry. In case of cavalry charge, let these men be on the frontline and hold their grounds. Form 3~4 line to prevent any cavalry from running away unscathed. Swords: Offensive troops, best reserve troop. Have the swordsmen positioned near your archers, use them to attack when a opponent cavalry charge is initiated or engaged with your missile troops. Do not allow these troop to be in your frontline unless to act as a cannon folder. 2 Missile troops: As a rule of thumb, missile troops should be placed on a high ground to ensure that they can deal the most damage for the entire battle. Without missile support, melee and cavalry will have a harder time to fight the battle, therefore it is important to keep the missile troops alive and conserve their ammunition. Always have a melee troops to defend them in case the enemy got close especially cavalry. Archers: High rate of fire and damage per minute. Archers have a high rate of fire, they can deplete their arrows a lot faster than the gunners do. It is wise to conserve their arrows by holding their fire and allow the enemy to get close before unleashing a whole volley of arrows. This ensure that they can hit targets more accurately with plenty of arrows saved. Gunners: Slow rate of fire but high damage per shot, shoots further than archers. By default, the gunners have a slower rate of fire as compared to the archers. This is compensated with higher damage per shot and longer range. Discipline fire is important if you want to keep up the rate of fire, command your troops to hold your fire before firing by flanks. If the enemies are close enough, enable fire at will for all your men. 3 Cavalry troops: Cavalry troops are the most offensive unit on the battlefield, they are capable of delivering a deadly charge against the enemy and chase down any routing troops. Spears: Most feared weapon of the battlefield, even against a lone spearman. When the spears penetrates any man, he is most likely dead or unconscious. Infantry troops should stay away from them unless being protected by spear wall. Swords: Harassing troops but more vulnerable against spears. Since it lacks the weapon reach of a spear, the sword wielding cavalryman should not engage head on against spears. The Awaiting Tiger This is an ambush tactic, it employs a formidable army against the enemies that solely focus on archers and gunners. The infantries are to position themselves infront of the enemies while the players alongside with all cavalrymen to flank them. Once the enemies focused their attention on the cavalries, the infantries will then advance and join the slaughter. # The player orders his unit to stay behind a natural cover ( hill or anything that avoid that the enemy has visual contact on you) and ,maybe, orders cavalry to follow him # The infantries position themselves on a high ground to post invite the enemy forces to advance. # Cavalries are to follow the player to the side of the enemy forces on their advance, avoiding contact with any missile troops. # At this point, the enemy archers and gunners will begin to take aim and shoot the infantries. The player's cavalry forces charges in to confuse the enemies. Players may also charge in first and harass the enemy's missile troops to get their attention before sending in the cavarly. # While the enemy troops are busy fighting against the cavalry, the infantries charges in to support the player's cavalry troops. As the number of player's troop is great, the enemy will have to either fight a loosing battle or rout. All routing enemies will be shot or chased by the player's troops. The Kiting Crane As the forementioned tactic, the awaiting tiger, the kiting crane depends on the ability of the player to succesfully distract the enemy troops by harassing them and using missile troops to thin their ranks. In difference to the awaiting tiger, the crane is a more passive tactic as it doesn't make use of melee infantry (except as a safety countermeasure) Required troops: * A Mounted Player Character: as all harassing tactics it works better with a faster horse, a skilled rider and weapons that allow the player to kill an melee enemy without retaliation as: a long yari (preferably couched), a bow (and skilled archer), or a tetsubo (for it's guard-breaking qualities) * Horse archery trained companions (optional): due the lack of "trainable" horse archers, the companion are the only source in vanilla Gekokujo of horse archer units. a lone player can easily harass and get enough "aggro" to distract an army, but additional harassers make easier to distract the enemy. just remember to ensure that your companion troops don't get on a melee, as AI can't handle well the idea of avoiding a fight. * Ranged troops: though an skilled horse archer can tear down alone an army (with enough arrows on inventory and luck) more often your gunners and archers will be those who do the heavy work of killing the enemy. get many as you can for this tactic. * Melee troops (optional): in strict sense, for this tactic melee units are useless, but sometimes due mishandlings or miscalculations some enemy troops reach your missile troops. the most skilled ranged troops can handle a small melee, sadly the less skilled don't. keep some spearmen as a safeguard. Best situational use: This tactic depends on the ability of the mounted player to harass the enemy, so it works better on places where the player can freely run, like clear plains or softly sloped hills. It works worst in places where the player can't run, like heavily forested or mountainous maps. This tactic works better when the enemy has few cavalry or archers. as the ranged troops are the bane of the horse archers as also are the lancer cavalry. This tactic work best against slow melee blobs, as they try hopelessly to pursuit the harassers instead of charging against your "missile blob". Note that a skilled enough horse archer player can deal with enemy archers and cavalry but they still put a strain to this tactic. It should also be noted that in order for this strategy to work well, the player (and his fellow harassers in form of companions) should obviously not be luring the enemy too diagonally. Ranged troops in Mount and Blade have major difficulties hitting enemies that are not coming at them in a straight line, and Gekokujo is not an exception to this rule. Because of this, it is advisable to try and keep the angle between your ranged blob and the enemies to a minimum. Your own units can never damage each other, so you don't run into any risk of getting hit yoruself when riding towards your archers with the kited infantry behind you. The Tactic in itself: # deploy your "foot" soldiers (ranged and melee) in an advantageous position, most probably a hill overlooking towards the enemy. # sally forth alone or with horse archer companions towards the enemy army. # once in the range, try to identify the enemy officer, it's most probably a lord unit, but sometimes it's a high veterancy unit. the formation officer most often stays back in second line between the archer line and the cavalry flank. # if possible before killing the officer, eliminate the enemy cavalry, they are dangerous and can spoil this tactic. # kill the enemy officer and watch their formation break down to chase you. # carefully allow the enemy "blob" to chase you and thin their ranks. if you go too fast and far they will lose interest and go against your main army if you go too slow and close, well, they kill you easily. # guide them into your main army range and watch how they are picked down by your shooters. # as they lose troops they start to break down and try to escape or attack your main formation, don't allow a big chunk of enemies to get close to your troops. keep "the aggro" on you, not your foot troops. # eventually they will rout away or enemy reinforcements will arrive. to "herd" the enemy reinforcements, make some "close runs" on them, killing their soldiers until they start to follow you instead of charging your army. Pros and Cons # Pros #* it allows very lopsided victories, as the own casualties are minimal due (if done well) the lack of melee. #* it makes effective use of ranged troops, specially of the gunners. #* it can be used with low rank missile troops (ashigaru skirmishers and hired gunners). though its obviously works better with more veteran ranged troops (vet monk gunners or hatamoto gunners). # Cons #* it requires (minimally) a mounted player with a "couchable" yari but it really works with a horse archer player, which is hard to level up if not built from the beginning of the game. #* it REALLY needs a experienced human player, as closing in under fire, killing an officer behind a wall of soldiers and keeping an army "amused" practically alone is hard as it sounds. #* if you lose the attention of the "enemy blob" it can go wrong, like, real wrong. #* lancer cavalry (or lucky gunners) can de-horse you, easily, spoiling the whole tactic #* it absolutely need a good amount of ranged troops (a few dozen or more) #* if the enemy decides to charge instead of advancing in formation, it will requiere a lot more of effort to "herd" the enemy towards you instead of your army. #* it is, in certain way, very gamey. Imperial Army tactics This tactic is solely used for fun, it is inspired by the movie 'The Last Samurai' whereby the line infantry unleash a barrage of bullets into the charging cavalry and infantry. The Last Samurai takes place in Japan's Boshin war when rifles are much more effective as compared to the old teppo guns. Since Gekokujo does not have a specific troop similar to the line infantry, companions will be used as a part of your line infantry. Your line infantry should consist of two things: 1. All companions only Companions can carry any equipments, train up their gunnery skill and never dies. 2. Balanced Hizen Teppo or Sakai Teppo Both teppo guns have the highest rate of fire to resemble the muzzle loading rifles used in the film and the time period. Not to worry about the accuracy of these weapon because accuracy is based on how skilled your companions are. Hiring companions, buying equipments and training them are sure costly. If you do frequent quest and hunt plenty of bandits, money should not be a problem for you to become a merchant in Japan. As you progress further, your companions will eventually surpass the Hatamoto Gunners and became an excellent sharpshooter. Moving on to the tactics, your army shouldn't solely focused on line infantry itself and should be protected by melee cavalry and infantry by their side. Here are a list of basic troops for the entire set-up: 1. Hired Gunners Hired Gunners are cheap and could be easily trained from peasant man, they can be recruited from the inn or rescued prisoners after the battle. Hatamoto Gunners are ignored because you can get a couple of gunners at the same cost of only one Hatamoto Gunners. More gunners means more firepower and rate of fire. 2. Spearman or neutral troops Spearman are cheap, they need not be like the samurai because it is their job to hold the enemies at bay while your gunners pick off the targets one by one or allowing cavalry support. Not to mention that enemy general likes to use cavalry to harass your infantry line, causing chaos and divert their attention from the main enemy force. Neutral troops such as Sado Returnee or Jimon Monk Warriors are also good choice for cannon folder if you can. 3. Cavalry Cavalry need not to be a Hatamoto Cavalry Guard to do the job, a simple Mounted Retainer or Mounted Officer should do. Cavalry main job is to halt the enemy force from advancing into your main line further while your gunners are still reloading. It also need not to have a huge number of them because your line infantry are doing the killing. A couple of them should be enough to divert a majority or a portion of the enemy forces from reaching your line. Battle Deployment: The deployment of troops are simple: 1. Line infantry and gunners should be on the frontline, positioned on a high ground. 2. Melee infantry are to position themselves at the lowest slope of the high ground to reduce the speed of enemy cavalry from climbing up. Any weak troops are to stay near the line infantry for protection. 3. Cavalry forces are to be positioned on the left and right flank to avoid friendly blockade of movements. The enemy forces will normally advance slowly, allowing your gunners to fire off their weapon continuously and pick off the targets one by one. As your companions are firing, you should take command of the Hired Gunners because they are weak in accuracy. Fire off by flanks before fire by will will increase their chance of killing someone. If the enemy are charging their cavalry and your gunners missed, gather your spear troops and have them placed in a tight formation in a row of 3~4 infront of the frontline. Once the cavalry charge have been halted, send in the cavalry to prevent any enemy cavalry from running away. Then call back the cavalry to their respective position. Should you find that your melee infantry are falling apart, have your companions/line infantry switched to melee to counter-attack. All remaining Hired Gunners should be placed behind cover for safety, their survival is very important because they can still kill targets while your line is holding them off. If you happened to have a fair number of cavalry force in your army, use them as reserve especially for counter-attack against enemy advance. Don't allow them to charge the enemies head on unless they are weak. For the emperor! Banzai! Wings of Crane This is a very offensive tactic, so expect casualties anyway Context The enemy is barricated on a hill and has a decent amount of skirmishers, but there are some natural covers around his position. Required troops In fact, you will need just an army divided in 3 groups. To be more effective, you will need decent skirmishers as well and decent cavalry or infantry.Also, companions gonna be useful.If the player is on a mount, things gonna be easier. The Tactic # The player separate skirmishers, cavalry and infantry placing the skirmishers at the center (3 rows and spread out X2), cavalry on the flattest area at the sides of your skirmishers behind a natural cover and infantry on the remaining side # Use your companions as fodder or to distract the enemy from your groups (from the moment they can't die) # Advance your inantry and your cavalry in safe spots, protected from the skirmishers' fire # Place your companion behind the enemy in an uncovered spot, they should buy some time # Quickly advance your skirmishers in a firing spot, so you don't waste your companions' sacrifice.If you've done well in traing your army, quality shall prevail # Now, the enemy skirmishers are distracted, so advance your melee groups, now not necessarily in safe spots. If needed, the player should attract enemies' attention by charging their formation. DO NOT KILL THE ENEMY LORD OR COMMANDER, otherwise his troops will charge ruining the tactic # Now, charge your infantry and your cavalry Results The enemy wasn't able to hold his advantage on skirmishers and terrain, now his best troops are dead and the player has conquered a key battlefield position where hold against enemy reinforcements, but he also lost someone and all or atleast many of his companions.